Assassin's Creed 3 dev: easy mode can ruin games

Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson doesn't believe in "easy mode".

"A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes," Hutchinson told EDGE.

"If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game. You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game."

Although other media such as film may tone down content for the broadest possible theme, Hutchinson used an analogy to illustrate how unique this problem is to video games.

"It’s like if I picked up a book and it said, 'Do you want the easy version or the complicated version?'" he said.

Assassin's Creed 3 won't have an easy mode, instead plumping for a medium level of difficulty. But it will have an option for as in Brotherhood and Revelations, players will be challenged to fulfil optional requirements while completing missions, which will up the difficulty for those keen to do it the hard way. The action adventure epic hits in October on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with an October PC launch and undated Wii U debut.

"Easy mode" is the topic du jour after Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki said he'd considered putting one in the notoriously difficult RPG because people are so scared of it, despite the fact that it goes against the game's design principles.